Dear Diane
Listin,,,,,see a derm to get a professional opinion. Maybe you could
get on some Elidel or Protopic along with the Klaron.
As for accutane….
In standard treatment of 5 months is not condsidered "long term."
Doctors say that it leaves your system after 30 days from
discontinuing it. But I would say to be on the safe side 90 days is
when it completely is out of your system (that’s just my conservative
approach).
As for accutane side effects,,,,no doubt it is a strong drug. That
is why doctor supervision is required and blood tests (liver, kidney
and cholesterol) are done every four weeks. Long term/low dose
therapy (years) will require the same tests but probably not every
month.
I want you to know that before I went on accutane I was on
tetracycline for a year. It caused my develop a severe case of
nocturia (night time urination). It turns out your kidneys work a
the primary organ to excrete tetracycline. It developed a tolerance
to tetracycline and was switched to eurythromycin. After 8 weeks my
severe acne did not go away. So the derm said lets do the accutane.
BUT, before I was to start the accutane I had to do the blood tests.
I had abnormal results for my liver. Was sent to an internist who
said, "it can’t be because of the antibiotics you were taking. You
must have hepatitis." WHAT! Took the hepatitis tests. All came
back negative. Also stopped taking the antibiotics. One month later
my liver function returned to normal. Both internist and
dermatologist were surprised by reaction to the antibiotics.
Went on accutane a month after that. During my whole time on
accutane I had normal liver, kidney and cholesterol functions.
I make this point because sometimes it is the "well tolerated" drugs
which cane be more harmful that the "serious" drugs.